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Nexus Hypothesis: Overview 4

from NZ Suekama

Transcending

Reductionism

NZ Suekama is inspired by both materialist and metaphysical approaches to Black/Third World feminism and unitive theories of sex, race, class.

But she also observes reductive applications have even come to define feminist as well as queer and trans theories of gender inequality

For NZ Suekama, transfeminist materialism must be scientific in order to transcend the weaknesses in Black/Third World feminist and queer and trans theory

Class, Race, Sex:

The Additive Model

in Black/Third World Feminism

The Reductionist Worldview

An unfortunate consequence of some approaches to unitive theories of race, gender, class (that go beyond the Kinematic) is when additive models of interlocking domination become popular.

NZ Suekama argues that Additive models are reductionist, even if they do not privilege biology. In this way, they find that some Marxist critiques of feminism are not wholly off base.

The Additive

Model: How Black feminism gets reduced

Citing the Dialectical Biologist, we can see how "reductivism" looks when derived from Decartes:

"In the Cartesian world, that is, the world as a clock, phenomena are the consequences of the coming together of individual atomistic bits, each with its own intrinsic properties, determining the behavior of the system as a whole. Lines of causality run from part to whole, from atom to molecule, from molecule to organism, from organism to collectivity. As in society, so in all of nature, the part is ontologically prior to the whole."

When Reduction works as method...

Lewontin and Levins, Gould, and other scienctists agree that reductionism can work in molecular biology, but it fails with explaining more complex phenomena such as psychological deveopment, human behavior, evolutionary biology, ecology, culture.

Engels applies this ambivalent critique to class struggle. We can apply this to national and gender/sexual liberation struggles too.

Linear, Causative, Cumulative Results

Citing Stephen Jay Gould, the method of reduction is about taking a complex system or process or structure, and breaking it down into its "component parts" (pg. 221, The Hedgehog, The Fox, and the Magister's Pox).

Gould says from here, complex systems would be explained in terms of the "properties and laws regulating the parts." But, the "laws" involved in the "actions" of those parts does not always explain how those parts interact until one must reconstruct the "higher level item of consideration," (ie, the wholes) and thus combine the parts together.

Now, Gould says there are some interactions that can be "predicted" prior to the construction of a whole (when considering the parts separately based on their qualities). In these instances, reductionism triumphs as a method. These are what Gould calls "linear" or "additive" interactions.

One-To-One Correspondence or Not?

The authors are speaking of Gregor Mendel, an early pioneer in the science of heritability. When they speak of "phenotype," they define that as a combination of the observed "morphology, physiology, metabolism, and behavior" (pg. 90) of an organism.

But, the authors argue, while this proved useful for a reductionist method to illuminate certain understanding about how traits are inherited in that instance, the one-to-one ratio it involved turned out not to be generalizable.

"... the laws of inheritance were discovered by following simple traits that have a one-to-one correspondence to genes. Mendel succeeded where others had failed partly because he worked with horticultural varieties in which major differences in phenotype resulted from alternative alleles for single genes.

Mendel’s peas had a single gene difference between tall and short plants, but in the usual natural populations of most plant species there is no simple relation at all between height and genes. So when Mendel tried to understand the inheritance of variation in the wild species Hieracium, he failed completely."

(pg. 89, On Evolution, The Dialectical Biologist)

Mendel's Peas: When Reduction Works

When it came to the particular plant varieties that Mendel was studying, major differences in a particular a phenotypic presentation (height) could be linked, quite simply, to one basic gene difference.

Which is to say, Mendel could hardly understand the laws of inheritance for the many plant species in other instances. These are those for which phenotype difference does not correspond to single gene difference.

When Reductionism cannot work as a method...

However, citing Gould, we see that "reductionism, despite its triumphs in a large domain of appropriate places, cannot be universally extendable as an optimal path to complete scientific understanding." (Pg. 220, The Hedgehog, Fox, and the Magister's Pox)

Again, citing the Dialectical Biologist, the reductivist method looks as follows:

"way of finding out about the world that entails cutting it up into bits and pieces (perhaps only conceptually) and reconstructing the properties of the system from the parts of the parts so produced."

There are a great many phenomena where interactions being examined in a reductionist method do not "cumulate to the higher level result" by addition. There is no room for one-to-one causative explanations based on qualities and actions that parts may have when considered in their isolation; such parts' very qualities are interpenetrated with wholes.

When considered at "the level of their totality" (to use Gould's language) the outcomes become measurable "only at the level of direct occurrence"; a linear prediction cannot occur. This makes them "nonlinear" and "nonadditive."

Complex Emergent, Contingent

Phenomena

* TW - transmisogynoir, misgendering

Gould is clear that nonlinear and nonadditive phenomena dont appear "ex nihilo" (out of nothing). He argues, instead, that they are emerge from properties that only make their "first appearance in a complex system as a consequence of non-additive interactions among components of the system... for the obvious reason they do not appear at any lower, less complex level."

Source:

enslaved.org - "Francisco Manicongo" entry (adapted by

James Almeida and Steven J. Niven. From contributing Institutions Hutchins Center for African & African American Research & Harvard University, Cambridge, MA. Oxford University Press (USA) African American Studies Center)

Xica Manicongo was a Congo-born gender/sexually expansive person who modern Black Brazilian travestis recall as the earliest recorded trans woman or queer/trans figure in Brazilian history.

Enslaved in Bahia, Xica Manicongo was dubbed a "crossdresser" and was investigated under the 1591 Portuguese Inquistion.

Matias Moreira, a Portuguese Christian guard, condemned Xica Manicongo and described her style of dress as a manner in which "sodomites in the lands of Angola and Congo are known to dress when they take [on] the role of patient/submissive/receiving woman."

Moreira also made sure to specify what the reported indigenous term to describe Xica Manicongo's gender/sexual expanse was ("quimbanda")

Parts-Wholes

Interpenetration Revisited*

In order to compare and contrast the Unitive and Additive view of Sex-Race-Class, NZ Suekama asks us to consider two different ways of interpreting Matias Moreira's portrayal of Xica Manicongo, especially as it relates to Xica Manicongo's being investigated by the Inquistion

Additive view: the outcomes of dynamics in a system can be predicted and explained by looking at the qualities that the parts of a system have independant of each other

Nonadditive: the outcomes of dynamics in a system can only be predicted and explained by looking at the qualities that the parts of a system have when involved with each other

Parts-Wholes

Interpenetration

Revisited:

Unitive vs Additive

Additive view: the outcomes of dynamics in a system can be predicted and explained by looking at the qualities that the parts of a system have independant of each other

In this view, the Western calibration of patriarchy is taken at face value.

Xica Manicongo's pathologization is simply about how her "gender presentation" is at variance with her "anatomical sex."

This also means that the issue becomes primarily about how an a priori opposition between maleness and femininity finds itself embodied in someone racialized Black.

Parts are considered independant of their wholes and misused to mount explanation of the phenomenon

Whole = Xica Manicongo's pathologization

Part A = patriarchal understandings of maleness and gay male sexuality

Part B = patriarchal understandings of femininity and feminine attire

Additive (reductive) Interpretation of Xica Manicongo's pathologization

Nonadditive: the outcomes of dynamics in a system can only be predicted and explained by looking at the qualities that the parts of a system have when involved with each other

In this view, we look at the dialectical interprenetation of how Xica embodies the gender/sexual patterns endogenous to Congolese cultures, versus those exogenous patterns imposed from the Christian/Western lens under the Inquisition.

Xica Manicongo's pathologization is about how embodying the quimbanda role as an expression of Congolese culture is at variance with the cisheteronormative organization of the Portugese church

Parts are considered as interpenetrated with/in of their wholes in order to yield an explanation at the level of direct emergence/occurrence of their dynamics

Whole = Xica Manicongo's pathologization

Part A = Xica Manicongo's anatomy and sexual behavior vis-a-vis the Christian myth of "sodomy"

Part B = Xica Manicongo's presentation and attire vis-a-vis Portuguese views of the Congolese quimbanda role

Unitive (non-linear) interpretation of Xica Manicongo's pathologization

"Inevitably people see in physical nature a reflection of the social relations in which their lives are embedded, and a bourgeois ideology of society has been writ large in a bourgeois view of nature..."

- The Dialectical Biologist

"The social ideology of bourgeois society is that the individual is ontologically prior to the social. Individuals are seen as freely moving social atoms, each with his or her own intrinsic properties, creating social interactions as they collide in social space. In this view, if one wants to understand society, one must understand the properties of the individuals that “make it up.” Society as a phenomenon is the outcome of the individual activities of individual human beings."

- The Dialectical Biologist

Bourgeois/Colonial Ideology and Reductivism

In "The Dialectical Biologist," Lewontin and Levins suggest that the shift in European class society and the Political order from a Christian monarchical to a bourgeois liberal one came with reductionism becoming the default worldview.

Reductionism is most convenient given the alienated character of bourgeois relations:

people are individuated, not bound to land

economic relations are market-oriented and not subject solely or primarily to the landed aristocrat/lord

people are dispossessed and must sell their labor power to get access to what is necessary to survive

The rise of "Exclus"

Reductive views of Patriarchy

Reductionism yields an "additive" view of gender marginalization.

Gender, sex, and sexuality are considered seperate from the social, material whole in a class and cultural perspective.

Traits that gender patterns only exhibit because of their interpenetration with/in that whole are viewed atomistically as though they are rooted in gender/sex/sexuality as some core, base phenomenon independent of these other realities.

A major consequence of this perspective is what gets known as "exclusionary" (or "exclu") discourses in feminist and even queer/trans struggles.

Gay Power vs. Gay Liberation

Additive views assume Sylvia Rivera was excluded simply because of her ethnicity, or because of transphobic presumptions regarding her sexual anatomy, or because her class background, or because of her participation in radical struggle.

In contrast to STAR and other militant orgs, the exclusionary "Gay" and "feminist" struggle preferred a vision of liberation that focused on bourgeois liberal rights and representation

Sylvia Rivera was a Latina street queen who participated in the Stonewall Rebellion against cops in NYC in the 70s. She co-founded a revolutionary organization called "Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries" with her friend Marsha P Johnson. Sylvia was also a member of the Young Lords Party.

At a 1973 Gay Rally, Sylvia Rivera stormed the stage to challenge "exclusionary" rhetoric and behavior in the Gay and feminist movement. While the nascent Gay Liberation Movement cited Stonewall as its catalyst, trans women like Sylvia Rivera were typically excluded from "Gay" as well as "feminist" spaces.

"Y'all better quiet down!"

Sylvia's experience of exclusion, as with other gurlz like her involved biases concerning her transness, especially transfeminine identity, but also how that was interpenetrated with a non-white cultural expression, working class and lumpen/underclass backgrounds, and history of organizing within prisoners' and other revolutionary movements.

The label "TERF" refers to a particular brand of Feminism which reductively assumes that trans individuals are "socialized" according to the sex assigned to them at birth.

This reductionist idea is used to exclude transness from the feminist struggle.

Alot of recent trans struggles have confronted specifically pathologization for biophysical presentation, dress/attire, and hormonal changes. As a result, some trans individuals reduce the basis of transphobia to these particular phenomena. They use such a view to "exclude" forms of sexual expansivity that may not involve these particular concerns.

Exclusionary discourses rely on additive (reductive) views of Patriarchy because it is most convenient for neoliberal interests.

For this reason, representation of Gay and Lesbian issues has also typically been white and bourgeois and Western.

Many trans spaces have also internalized reductionism, and thus exclusionary rhetoric.

Trans representation typically skews white, Western, and bourgeois.

These trends have come to be known as "homonationalism" or "gay assimilation."

Exclus, Neoliberalism, and Fascism

Many such movements have joined in with fascists trying to attack trans movements that exist outside a Western framework, or joined in a campaign against "wokeness" (ie, Black struggles)

"the ubiquity of biologically rooted explanations for difference in Western social thought and practices is a reflection of the extent to which biological explanations are found compelling... in the Western experience, social construction and biological determinism have been two sides of the same coin, since both ideas continue to reinforce each other. When social categories like gender are constructed, new biologies of difference can be invented. When biological interpretations are found to be compelling, social categories do derive their legitimacy and power from biology. In short, the social and the biological feed on each other." (pg 9, The Invention of Women)

New Biologies

Amidst the social movements of the 60s/70s, several biological scientists questioned the naturalization of race and gender, which birthed "social construction" theories.

Activism from that era also saw the official depathologization of homosexuality in the US medical sphere. The rise of disability movements also co-occurred with this era, too.

Some Confusions About The Races

"The growing realization in the middle of the twentieth century that most species had some genetic differentiation from local population to local population led finally to the abandonment in biology of any hope that a uniform criterion of race could be constructed. Yet biologists were loathe to abandon the idea of race entirely."

"... the abandonment of “race” as a biological category during the last quarter of the twentieth century... spread into anthropology and human biology. However, that abandonment was never complete in the case of the human species. There has been a constant pressure from social and political practice and the coincidence of racial, cultural and social class divisions reinforcing the social reality of race, to maintain “race” as a human classification."

New Race Reductions

Lewontin argues that there is more variation within what gets called races than across so-called races.

The use of race to understand differences across populations is more a social choice than a reflection of biological fact.

Furthermore, the insistence on this chosen classification across populations has an added inconsistency insofar as it would lead to a constant redefining of what constitutes "races" in the first place given the incredible intra-"racial" variation and diversity that exists.

Sex and Race in The Long Shadow of the Human Genome Project

""Genomania,” the term used by Ruth Hubbard and others to describe a generalized rage for genetic models, claims, and explanations... has been especially acute wherever practices or institutions related to sex are concerned."

New Sexual Reductions

"In the early 1990s, studies by Simon LeVay, J. Michael Bailey and Richard Pillard—and, most notably, Dean Hamer (who was also the source of one of the two “thrill-seeking gene” studies)—grabbed headlines by purporting to establish a biological, even genetic, basis for male homosexuality.

.... you’d have to have read stories buried pages deep in the same newspapers to notice. And even while The New York Times gave coverage—on page 19—to research that dramatically failed to replicate Hamer’s “gay gene” studies, the author of the article nonetheless spun the results as a minor setback in the quest for a gay gene, underscoring “the difficulty scientists face in finding genes that underlie complex human behaviors.”"

According to Roger N Lancaster, there is no firm underlying genetic basis for sexual identity/behavior, as with much about humanity complexity.

But concerns with sex have been key to modern revivals of reductivism in science as a road to social explanations.

Coloniality and the Additive Model

NZ Suekama argues that the Additive model is unique in that it can oscillate between Organism-as-Subject, Organism-as-Object, Organism-as-Subject-and-Object views, all to maintain a view of gender struggles that benefits Western Statecraft and Class Interest.

Grand Patriarchy

vs.

Minor Patriarchy

Sanyika Shakur defines unequal gender relations that have roots in European societies as a Grand Patriarchy.

Sanyika Shakur defines unequal gender relations that have roots in non-European societies as a Minor Patriarchy.

This is because colonialism sets the former above the latter.

An additive (reductionist) view of evolution would suggest that Patriarchy (whole) is a result of when independent systems (parts) of social organization that begin as binary/dimorphic (part) combine at some historical juncture at the wider level or an "intersection" of experiences at the individual level.

But this view cannot adequately theorize the full gamut of forces involved in the oppression of Third World peoples, especially queer/trans individuals, without taking our struggles to be something that must be fitted into an already existing, narrow paradigm (reinforcing the Kinematic).

Race First Theories

Unlike typical uses of additive model which fit Third World and sexually expansive struggles into a white, cis, bourgeois frame of reference, the additive model when applied in Black feminism and decolonial thought looks differently.

Here, one can only explain the position of non-white sexual expansivity with reference to pre-established analyses of how cis/het non-white and class exploited peoples are viewed.

Additive views in Black Queer Feminism

"Play Aunties and Dyke Bitches"

Kairo, a young stud among the many "young studs of color in Frisco [who] were hypercriminalized" as Shange writes, is somewhat interpreted through the notion of a "confluence of high risk and high reward that masculinity entails," a view which starts from commentary on the criminalization of cisgender Black boys and men, before suggesting that such "risk and reward" can "stretch beyond those assigned male at birth."

This is an additive conception of "privilege" and oppression that takes anatomical sex reductions as their deictic center (frame of reference). This is the starting place prior to any acknowledgement and theorization of how expansive gender/sexuality is interpenetrated with/in Black relations to the nuclear family and carceral State as bourgeois and colonial institutions.

"Stretched Beyond Those Assigned Male at Birth"

In the text Play Aunties and Dyke Bitches: Gender, Generation, and the Ethics of Black Queer Kinship, Savannah Shange examines stud/femme dynamics among young Black queer girls in a pedagogical setting.

An autoethnographic work, Shange examines a school that claims to be progressive and liberatory for kids of color, including non-cis/non-heterosexual ones, but which also is in proximity to carceral violence.

The text brilliantly traces the violent gendered dynamics that show up in the conflict between two students of Shange to "the range of antagonisms that lie within the frame of The Black Family.

But, NZ Suekama critiques the ways sex dimorphism and a binary interpretation of both gender and gender performance are taken as a given, even despite transness and Black gender variance is acknowledged and theorized.

"Black Bodies" as the Deictic Center

Privileging the stereotypes used to racialize the bodies of Black people, Shange goes so far as to assert that one would be "fronting" to suggest that Black "non-trans" women "weild structural power."

NZ Suekama looks at footnote number 26, in Shange's "Play Aunties and Dyke Bitches" to illustrate why reduction of Black gender atruggle to mere "ontology" is erroneous.

Shange insists on using the term "non-trans" as opposed to "cisgender" because of the idea that "dominant genders... are based on white bourgeois normativity." Citing Cohen and Spillers, Shange suggest that there is no way for Black women to ever achieve "'real’ or legitimate womanhood" and that "this dynamic holds for Black men, just with different stereotypes."

Ontological Reductionism

NZ Suekama coined the term "ontological reductionism" to describe additive theories of race, class, gender. In this perspective, Black gender struggle is primarily a symptom of the racialized narratives and racial-class violences associated with animalistic reductions of "the Black body."

But, in a world where "the body" is already assumed to be two-form (dimorphic), this means that "Black maleness" and "Black femaleness" are made the starting point for any and all theories of sexual/gender expansivity among Black people.

It suggests that the latter is "always already" an outgrowth of the former.

Citing Oyeronke Oyewumi, this habit is a symptom of "Western body-reasoning"

For NZ Suekama this obscures the role many Black cis women play in maintaining the material/power structure involved with the violences of the nuclear family, especially through in repression of transgender Black children.

For NZ Suekama, Body-Reasoning in Black feminism assumes that the sole or primary structures we must consider are the ideative and metaphysical constructions of the body which weaponize animality against Black womanhood in order to castigate Black cis women as unfeminine/unwomanly.

Body Reasoning

as

Smokescreen

In "The Invention of Women," Oyeronke Oyewumi contrasts Yoruba "world-sense" with a "body-reasoning" of the West.

In her view, feminist discourses rely on such body-reasoning, thereby universalizing a particular set of cultural as well as political assumptions.

For NZ Suekama, body-reasoning obscures the dynamics of material/power relations and the "nexuses" at which such relations overlap (imbricate)

NZ Suekama observes that reducing Black gender struggle merely to Ontological or metaphysical constructions of African people’s bodies can not only obscure material/power differentials between Black cis/het women versus other Black QTGNC populations.

It can also be used to completely push aside any discussion of Minor Patriarchy in general, as in the case of Black Male Studies and Africana Womanism

Transfeminist Interventions

To overcome the cissexist and exorsexist consequences of additive views of Patriarchy, transfeminism has emerged within the last two or three decades.

Within transfeminist discourse, phrases like "gender outlaw" have been popularized.

Sanyika Shakur's theories of Grand Patriarchy and Minor Patriarchy are influenced by transfeminist and ecofeminist interventions.

He explicitly uses the term "Gender outlaw" in texts like "The Pathology of Patriarchy," a term which was popularized by queer and transfeminist thinkers

Emi Koyama's comparison is once again an additive conception.

It is to be interpreted through the lens of liberal notions of "intersectional" theory that take the characteristics of oppressive social dynamics associated with atomized notions of "identity" and then stacks them on top of each other (like the "knapsack" in Peggy McIntosh's explanation).

Intersections are made these a priori or disparate phenomena that then come together retaining their independent social dynamics; such an interpretation flows from taking the atomization of these intersections at face value within our consciousness.

In Koyama's case, this additive, cumulative perspective starts from categorial notions of disparate "white" and "male" privilege onto which transfemininity is then stacked a posteriori.

The notion of "maleness" itself as basis for socialization is reified.

Emi Koyama's "Transfeminist Manifesto" text often cited as an important and distinct evolution within the early transfeminisms that began to circulate around queer theory, feminist thought, and trans discourses towards the close of the 20th century.

The Manifesto correctly takes up the expansive view of gender/sexuality at the heart of transfeminism, and aims to specifically challenge certain exclusionary rejoinders directed at trans women -- which rest on the notion of "male privilege."

According to Emi Koyama, a trans woman denying the possession of "male privilege" flows from the same logic undergirding the white and bourgeois women in the early feminist movement who denied having "white privilege" or "class privilege."

Transfeminist

Manifesto

For NZ Suekama, the Transfeminist Manifesto's critique of TERF style additive, reductionist, exclusionary views is severely limited and limiting.

For NZ Suekama, solidarity is important but solidarity cannot simply be ascertained through ontology if we understand Minor Patriarchy

NZ Suekama identifies this pattern in the Black transfeminism of Che Gosset.

Che Gosset was asked in an interview by George Yancy ("Black Transfeminist Thought Can Get us Free") about going beyond the gender binary in Black theories of carceral violence.

The answer provided centered on appeals to a shared experience in ontological exclusion from hegemonic systems among both Black cis/het and Black queer/trans populations

Black transfeminism

Within Black Studies, an orientation toward abolition of the carceral State and to the history of abolitionist struggle against slavery has yielded vital conversations useful to theorizing Black gender struggles.

Many of these perspectives draw from metaphysical critiques of Coloniality, and are in conversation with contributions from folks like Hortense Spillers or Sylvia Wynter.

They typically obscure the material dynamics of Minor Patriarchy by privileging an ontological critique of Patriarchy itself.

Furthermore, his Grand Patriarchy versus Minor Patriarchy centers the cultural calibration and class interests under Imperialism and Neocolonialism.

NZ Suekama points out how Sanyika Shakur's definition of sexism is not limited to the usual presupposition of a cisgender, heterosexual woman laboring for a husband within the home. He attends to the struggle of "gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgender people."

Multiple Sexisms

"While issues of sexism have been dealt with in large part by women, it’s necessary We think to broaden the scope of the discussion of sexism to include homophobia and heterosexism."

- The Pathology of Patriarchy (Sanyika Shakur)

For these reasons, NZ Suekama considers Sanyika Shakur's analysis a "unitive" not additive/reductionist theory of Patriarchy.

We can theorize a range of forms of sexual oppression with the help of Sanyika Shakur's theories of Grand Patriarchy and Minor Patruarchy

Note: this is not an exhaustive list

Some types of Sexual Oppression

According to Andrew Griffiths' analysis of the 2006 "Statement on Management of Intersex Disorders," the line between who is intersex and who is perisex/endosex is not always clear

The prefix "inter-" means "between"

The prefix "endo-" means "within"

The prefix "peri-" means "near, around"

Citing Peter Gelderloos, Sanyika Shakur argues that Patriarchy divides all people into two rigid "sex" categories: male and female, asserting these to be "natural and moral."

Inter-

Sexism

In the Talmud, Judaism recognizes Intersex existence. In Hinduism, the Hijra is a "third gender" social role that includes but is not limited to Intersex people. According to Maria Lugones, various non-Western cultures recognize and include(d) Intersex peoples

"Intersexism" refers to the mutilation of those who do not "naturally" fit into these Male-Female categories.

Anyone whose biology is assumed to fit within or close to these boxes is considered "endosex" or "perisex"

Intersexism forces us to understand that biological "sex" is about nature-nurture interpenetration. It is therefore a spectrum.

Sex is flattened into Dualism as a reflection of labor division, stratification, and hierarchy.

The prefix "trans-" means "away."

The prefix "cis-" means "toward."

Gender is reduced to a Binary as a reflection of labor division, stratification, and hierarchy

Citing Peter Gelderloos, Sanyika Shakur argues that Patriarchy attempts to destroy anyone who rejects the "gender binary" or who doesn't fit into the categories (male/female)

Cissexism forces us to understand that "gender" is also about nature-nurture interpenetration. It is therefore a spectrum.

A person could be positioned as "going away" or "going beyond" the sex category even if their biology is understood as fitting "within" or "close to" those same boxes. This means someone can be both Trans* + perisex

But this isn't the case for all people positioned as Trans*. Some are both Trans* and Intersex.

Cis-

Sexism

"Cissexism" refers to neutralization of any "gender" which is understood to "go away" or "go beyond" the supposed natural category of male or female sex.

Most cultures in human history lacked Binary relations. Some premodern and precolonial cultures organized a "gender pairing." This is not a dimorphist binary, however, as it was not defined around biology and hierarchical/oppositional relation. Typically, a pairing was only situationally rigid, not paradigmatically rigid. And the "pairing" held egalitarian, not dualist relations toward each other

For example, this can be observed of some Igbo traditional sexual expanses (nwoke and nwanyi)

Anyone whose gender is assumed to "go with" or "go toward" these boxes is considered "cisgender."

Citing Peter Gelderloos, Sanyika Shakur argues that Patriarchy attempts to destroy anyone who rejects the "gender binary" or who doesn't fit into the categories (male/female)

A tumblr user, Vergess, coined "exorsexism" in 2016, deriving it from a variety of computer logic known as XOR (Exclusive, or Operation).

An XOR takes two variables and combines them

But it only validates combinations that are either one or the other variable.

Tumblr and Twitter during the 2010s and into today became controversial for how a generation of (typically young) QTGNC folks developed or redeveloped theories of gender/sexual oppression and experience.

These discourses helped foster awareness of forms of sexual expansivity like "nonbinary" and "genderqueer" identity, "agender" identity, and more.

Exor-

Sexism

As bourgeois Western society seeks to now produce and coopt LGBTQIA+ identities, the system requires that these experiences be sorted into "either, or" (mutually exclusively) categorization so as to be legible to the State and forced into certain positions within class-colonial relations.

An example of exorsexism is the idea that a trans woman must be feminine, or else she is not "truly" a interested in affirming her womanhood

Another example of exorsexism is the idea that someone cannot be gender fluid (they must only be one or another gender, never both)

Combatting exorsexism requires recognizing that gender/sexually marginalized individuals are diverse and will find differing ways to challenge how Patriarchy tries to coerce and regulate gender/sex. Seemingly new "terms" and "labels" are a reflection of that constant negotiation

"exorsexism" refers to invalidation of both "genders" and "sexes" which cannot exactly be defined wholly and exclusively as one or the other of any number normative and non-normative categories

Citing Peter Gelderloos, Sanyika Shakur argues that Patriarchy goes on to define clear roles (economic, social, emotional, political) for men and women, asserting (falsely) that these roles are natural and moral

Contemporary usage of these terms has defined homosexual to mean anyone sexually attracted to genders the same as or similar to their own, and heterosexual to mean anyone sexually attracted to genders different from or dissimilar to their own.

The focus on sexual attraction and not just roles/relations, as well as the emphasis on "genders similar to" or "genders dissimilar to" is a direct response to the growth of knowledge regarding TGNC struggles, and how these have questioned the stasis of the sex binary.

In some cultures outside the West, there may be an expectation for one to reproduce biological children as a duty to one's community. But this is not universally made the sole or defining feature of social life. And the concept that such relations of sexual reproduction must be a fundamental and lifelong trait of the individual person is also not universal. Western thought makes biological reproduction a responsibility to the nation and to deity, as well as an intrinsic, defining aspect of one's personhood.

Hetero-

Sexism

"Heterosexism" refers to the ostracization of those who do not fit into or reject the roles that are supposedly "oriented" towards relations with the so-called "opposite" sex.

Anyone who inhabits roles or engages in relations seen as "oriented" towards the "same" so-called sex is positioned as "homosexual."

Heterosexism is key to upholding Patriarchy and the Nuclear Family. It is a central feature of bourgeois institutions. Heterosexism is idealized by authoritarian religious traditions.

Because the notion of "sexual attraction" (and romantic attraction) is an atomized trait made the defining feature of human personhood, allosexism is an institutional force within bourgeois Western modernity. Allosexism reinforces the Nuclear Family, Patriarchy, and heterosexism.

Citing Peter Gelderloos, Sanyika Shakur argues that Patriarchy makes all those who do not fit into or reject the supposedly moral/natural roles of a Binary/Dimorphist social system feel ugly, dirty, scary, contemptible worthless, reproducing violence against them.

Asexuality is not the same as constructions of sexual abstinence, celibacy, asceticism, or chastity. Throughout the world, various religions and spiritual systems may require either lifelong or situational periods in which one does not engage in sexual activity. This may be a gendered expectation in some cultures, and especially within Christianity and other hierarchical religions, can be used to reinforce Patriarchy. These constructions, however, typically assume that sexuality is a natural feature of life that must be curbed or disciplined, therefore relying on an allosexist presupposition about humanity.

Allo-

Sexism

Aspec peoples are typically seen as "broken," and disproportionately at risk of so-called "corrective" SA.

"Allosexism" refers to the assumption that all people "naturally" experience sexual attraction (Amatonormativity refers to the assumption that all people "naturally" experience romantic attraction).

Anyone who is understood as not "naturally" experiencing sexual attraction is positioned as asexual or "aspec" for short (to include aromantic individuals)

As bourgeois Western society seeks to now produce and coopt LGBTQIA+ identities, the system requires that these experiences be sorted into "either, or" (mutually exclusive) categories so as to be legible to the State and forced into certain positions within class-colonial relations.

Citing Peter Gelderloos, Sanyika Shakur argues that Patriarchy makes all those who do not fit into or reject the supposedly moral/natural roles of a Binary/Dimorphist social system feel ugly, dirty, scary, contemptible worthless, reproducing violence against them.

Monosexism is therefore related to exorsexism. It can be used to reinforce intersexism and cissexism as well as allosexism. Its primary function is within Patriarchy, heterosexualism, and the Nuclear Family.

But, due to the rise of the Gay Assimilation movement, it can be weilded by gay/lesbian individuals seeking integration via Marriage as an institution.

Mono-

Sexism

Combating monosexism requires understanding that some individuals may be sexually fluid, or encompass a range of so-called orientations and attractions.

"Monosexism" refers to the assumption that all people "naturally" experience sexual attraction (or romantic attraction) only to one gender, whether that be a gender same/similar to their own or a gender different from/dissimilar to their own.

Anyone whose relations, attractions, etc. are understood as oriented toward two or more genders/sexes is positioned as "bisexual" or "pansexual" or "m-spec" (short for "multiple attraction spectrum).

Combatting monosexism requires recognizing that "labels" and "boxes" change as people negotiate both their own experiences and self-concept as well as external forces and relations in immediate settings and wider society

The economy of desire rooted in this Patriarchal dependancy

is a structural consequence of the nexing of Euro-feudal relations called Consanguinity

"Then came the missionaries, the laws, the state – the colonial culture. These caused the second, corresponding aspect, of patriarchy: Dependency.

The colonized were made to feel that they’d been chosen as subjects for a great, all encompassing “civilizational” leap forward."

- Sanyika Shakur, The Pathology of Patriarchy

Citing Sanyika Shakur, NZ Suekama suggests that the "dependancy" curated by the State and authoritarian religion on feeling "chosen" for civilizational advancement yields a politics/economy of desire which extends Patriarchy to aspects of human embodiment that aren't sex-associated.

Desirability

Desire configures atomized traits whether they are sex-associated or not

From Purity to Desirability

This is why the ability to date, marry, and reproduce biological children is a standard everyone is expected to meet, even outside of religious settings. It has disproportionate effects on access needs of poor, fat, disabled people and anyone considered undesirable

Consanguinity

European patriarchy once anchored Christian monarchial relations on the "purity" of blood inheritance. This is called Consanguinity

Consanguinity anchored how one's status or position in the feudal order was reckoned. It emphasized marital and heteronormative relations between European Christians in order to stabilize this process.

With modern bourgeois society, European patriarchy changed, so that consanguinity was replaced with an emphasis on atomized, reductive biological traits. Rather than a focus on status, there is a focus on the innate capacity to participate in capitalist relations "properly."

This is why attraction is used to regulate who is "desirable" for the workforce and other domains of society.

The US even used to have "Ugly Laws" that repressed Disabled people and anyone considered unnattractive.

Conventional beauty standards still skew Eurocentric to this day and thread colorism, featurism, and texturism, with drastic economic and social effects on dark skinned folks, esp those with Afro-associated features and kinky hair.

Beyond Representation

Towards

Gender

Self-Determination

Whereas an additive (reductive) model is most conducive to a Representation politics, a unitive model in transfeminist perspective is more in line with a struggle for "Gender self-determination"

The center of a "gender self-determination" struggle is bodily autonomy as well as decolonization and class liberation.

A "gender self-determination" struggle prioritizes sexual liberation that wrestles with both Grand Patriarchy and Minor Patriarchy, navigating the dynamics endogenous to non-Western societies and those exogenously imposed.

This perspective also recognizes that many of the labels and terms under the LGBTQIA+ framework are a response specifically to the Western gender binary, and are not necessarily applicable to all forms of sexual/gender expansivity.

Primarily Black and Latine, STAR theorizes their oppression from the standpoint of what we now would call cissexism.

They implicate all those who we would now speak of as cisgender, who STAR called "heterosexuals and homosexuals of both sexes" Using the vocabulary of that time period. Immediately STAR connects cissexism to the lumpenization of gender expansive peoples---our relegation along the margins, the streets.

And this lumpen centered analysis is linked with revolutionary potential, a perspective shared with folks like the Black Panther Party during that time.

In the wake of the Stonewall Rebellion, the nascent militant phase of Gay struggle in the US was split internally. Some factions wanted to prioritize the prison struggle, to center the houseless struggle, to support revolutionary organizations like the BPP, and to build on a legacy of civil rights struggle. Among these were those street queens who would form STAR.

STAR takes a position against capitalism (2), police/prisons (3), and Ableist exploitation of gender expansive peoples via doctors and psychiatrists (4). They demand human rights for gender expansive peoples, but they specifically advocate for revolution and the "full participation" of gender expansive peoples in liberation struggle (5-8). They also uphold critiques of the US military, ultimately demanding revolutionary people's government in the same manner as many National Self-Determination struggles of that period of Upheaval (9).

The STAR Manifesto

In the manifesto, STAR makes use of a term like "self determination," very common in anti-colonial/socialist movements of that era because of the influence of Marxist, Leninist, Maoist ideology as it got synthesized with the concerns of national liberation (decolonization) movements.

STAR extends that synthesis to the protest of gender expansive peoples for bodily, cognitive, behavioral autonomy, and its expression in the form of gender presentation, physiological change, and unfettered right to "be gay anytime" (in that day and age, "gay" was an umbrella term in the way that Trans and Nonbinary are today).

Foregrounding an anti-political, anti-hierararchical, or anti-authoritarian ideology rooted in Black Radical Tradition (a la Cedric Robinson), otherwise known as Black Autonomy (a la Lorenzo Kom'boa Ervin) and "Black Anarchic Radicalism" (or BAR for short), the Anarkata Statement draws on Sylvia Wynter and distills a critique of Man's "humanist" reason. It uses this critique to analyze hegemonic gender (cisheteropatriarchy).

Ultimately, the Anarkata Statement grounds itself in decolonization, and as such recognizes the emancipation of a range of orientations toward gender: self-identification, changing, (re)creation, and "opting out completely." This can also include but isn't limited to reclaiming gender expanses from within precolonial, ancestral, indigenous genre-inflected experiences, identities, institutions, roles, and lifeways

As the carceral State and federal government waged war against Black Power struggle, a few revolutionary nationalists turned into anarchists, autonomists, anti-authoritarians in the 20th century

Their prison writings and organizing then inspired a revitalized focus on non-white resistance to the State, especially during the 2010s.

Within this later, younger generation, emerged the "Anarkata Statement," which synthesises Black Anarchism with a transfeminist view of bodily autonomy.

The Anarkata Statement

It agrees with the Marxist assertion that sexual exploitation anchors capitalist domination, such that it defines Gender Self-Determination around bodily autonomy and a materialist conception in which transformation of kinship structures and relations to land, rather than biology or ontology or axiology, are central to the struggle at hand.

The TWWA, CRC, and other Black feminists of the 20th century inspired a generation of 21st century organizing around "abolitionism" of the carceral State, especially in the face of mass incarceration. These movements gained new life in the wake of the murder of Trayvon Martin, Sandra Bland, Michael Brown, and more during the 2010s, culminating in the explosive 2020 Taylor-Floyd rebellions.

The Alliance's conception of queer liberation grapples with the problem of knowledge and of metaphysics vis-a-vis the material/power struggles involved with the "coloniality of gender."

It also takes on the specifically ethnocentric implications for trans women, trans men, nonbinary folks, and other (gender)queer populations of the Third World (although a critique of the State is not as central here)

Coming from a multi-tendency approach (as the Alliance includes anarchist and non-anarchist varieties of socialist and decolonial membership), Third World People's Alliance references the work of Maria Lugones in espousing its vision. Lugones articulated the "coloniality of gender" thesis. It is from here that, similar to the Third World Women’s Alliance from which TWPA derives its name, an analysis of race, class, gender in tandem are made (Triple Jeopardy), including critiques of the nuclear family, sexual relegations, and even of trans exclusionary radical feminism (TERF) ideology as it relates to Capitalism, cisheteropatriarchy, and colonialism.

Third World People's Alliance

But, some younger organizers noticed a tendency toward liberalism in many "abolitionist" organizations that flattened what Black/Third World feminism could offer. Out of this critique was the TWPA born.

Attending to the metaphysical and the material content of both is the central thrust of how NZ Suekama seeks to theorize a science of "self-determination" over the body and evolution of society.

For N.Z. Suekama, Transfeminist Materialism or Materialist Transfeminism is a way to "trace and transect" how what du Bois' called the color line is organized at "gender threads."

The color line refers to racism, segregation, fascism, colonialism, and imperialism.

The argument that these are organized at "gender threads" builds on Sanyika Shakur's notion of Grand Patriarchy and Minor Patriarchy.

Transecting the Color Line

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